European libraries join forces against Google

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Nineteen European national libraries have joined forces against
a planned communications revolution by internet search giant Google
to create a global virtual library, organisers said on
Wednesday.

The 19 libraries are backing instead a multi-million euro
counter-offensive by European nations to put European literature
online.

"The leaders of the undersigned national libraries wish to
support the initiative of Europe's leaders aimed at a large and
organised digitisation of the works belonging to our continent's
heritage," a statement said.

"Such a move needs a tight coordination of national ambitions at
EU level to decide on the selection of works," it added.

The move, organised by France's national library, comes after
Michigan University and four other top libraries - Harvard,
Stanford, New York Public Library and the Bodleian in Oxford -
announced a deal with Google in December to digitise millions of
their books and make them freely available online.

Google's plans have rattled the cultural establishment in Paris,
raising fears that the French language and ideas could be just
sidelined on the worldwide web, which is already dominated by
English.

French President Jacques Chirac has asked Culture Minister
Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and France's National Library president
Jean-Noel Jeanneney to study how collections in libraries in France
and Europe could be put more widely and more rapidly on the
internet.

The British National Library has given its implicit support to
the move, without signing the motion, while Cyprus and Malta have
agreed verbally to the text. Portugal is also set to approve
it.

Michigan and Stanford are planning to digitise their entire
library collections - totalling some 15 million books - while the
Bodleian is offering around one million books published before
1900.

The Harvard and New York Public Library contributions are
smaller, but the entire project is still expected to take up to 10
years, with cost estimates ranging from $US150 million ($A193.30
million) to $US200 million.

Jeanneney has acknowleged that such a project, comprising some
4.5 billion pages of text, would help researchers and give poor
nations access to global learning.

But he added: "The real issue is elsewhere. And it is immense.
It is confirmation of the risk of a crushing American domination in
the definition of how future generations conceive the world."

Chirac is due to address the question during his opening address
to a meeting of EU culture ministers in Paris on Monday and
Tuesday.